Religion, Philosophy and Spirituality   

Over the past few decades, we've learned more than ever about the true nature of pain. We better understand what causes it, what may best relieve it, and what we can do to minimize or even eliminate some types of pain for the rest of our lives. Many of those life-changing insights have not yet been made easily available to the public Thanks to Sanjay Gupta’s new book book, we’ve changed that. Our text will be Sanjay Gupta’s new book: It Doesn’t Have To Hurt.

Mike Murray is a Clinical Psychologist. His goal, over the past two decades, has been to provide people with tools to enhance their wellness and wellbeing.

Ever tried meditation or wondered what is meant by “inner work”? Discover your rich inner landscape through a modern spiritual practice of inquiry. This practice awakens and supports a person to explore whatever gets in the way of their deeper personal truth. If you feel stymied by negative self-talk or overly influenced by what others think- this practice helps liberate you from those forces. If you’re interested in learning about the interplay between your personality and the soul, consider the possibility of diving into an exploratory experience that opens the vivid, sensory, and dynamic realm of your consciousness. This study group will introduce the practice of inquiry by roughly following the book: Diving in the Inner Ocean by Dominic Lieber.

Julie Endress is a spiritual teacher in a modern path that pulls from depth psychology and ancient traditions. She has practiced inquiry for almost 20 years. Her background as an executive coach, consultant and engineer bring a real-world perspective to her role as a teacher.

Religious practices involve use of language to communication with the superior power(s), and to share the chosen beliefs with others. This course will examine how religions make use of language to meet their spiritual and non-spiritual goals, and how various facets of language are (or have been) influenced by their use as the linguistic medium of religion. Topics to be examined and discussed include legends on the divine origin of human languages, references to language and speech acts in sacred texts, the nature and use of sacred and liturgical languages, the development of the religious vocabulary of a language, the problems involved in the translation and transmission of sacred texts. This course will be a mixture of lectures and discussions.

Steven Dworkin is a Professor Emeritus of Romance Linguistics and Linguistics at the University of Michigan, where I taught from 1979-2019. His principal research interest is the history of the Romance languages. He regularly taught courses about Language and Religion in the Linguistics Department.